Quality Control: Eat Your Veggies
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Quality Control: Eat Your Veggies

Sustainable Comfort is a green building and energy efficiency consulting, construction and property management firm in Worcester. Last week, President Albert LaValley arranged for his employees to tour Assawaga Farm, where farmers Yoko Takemura and Alex Carpenter create and maintain fertility using organic practices. The couple focuses on amplifying flavor in their vegetables rather than yielding a massive harvest.

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LEED Project Spotlight- Albany Damien Center
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LEED Project Spotlight- Albany Damien Center

LEED in Motion: Residential highlights the numbers, knowledge and resources you need to keep pace with the rapidly growing green homes market. In this free report you will find key statistics on the size and growth of the green residential market, a deep dive in to LEED for Homes numbers, a close look at the human health aspects of homebuilding, and much more.

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U.S. Green Building Council Announces Annual LEED Homes Awards, Recognizing Residential LEED Projects Elevating the Living Standard Through Sustainable Design
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U.S. Green Building Council Announces Annual LEED Homes Awards, Recognizing Residential LEED Projects Elevating the Living Standard Through Sustainable Design

Today, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced the recipients of the annual LEED Homes Awards, which celebrate residential projects, developers and builders using LEED to improve quality of life for residents, reduce a building’s impact on the environment, and create healthier and more resilient communities. LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the world’s most widely used green building rating system. Recipients represent multi-family, single-family, and affordable housing projects and companies that participated in LEED in 2018.

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How SCI is Empowering Companies to Build Smarter
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How SCI is Empowering Companies to Build Smarter

Sustainable Comfort, Inc.is a green building and energy efficiency consulting and construction firm based in Worcester, Massachusetts. It helps developers, architects, contractors, and residents achieve healthier, resilient, and sustainable multifamily buildings through better construction practice and management and by providing clear, concise, and value-focused consulting on sustainable, energy-efficient, healthy housing.

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Movers & Shakers: Andrea French
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Movers & Shakers: Andrea French

Andrea French has been promoted to the ownership team at Sustainable Comfort, a Worcester environmentally sustainable construction and consulting firm. French has been with the company since 2015 and was most recently the vice president of administration, managing the company's strategic human resources, marketing, branding, administration and insurance efforts. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism and sociology from UMass Amherst.

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Capital Region Gives: Green facility helps Damien Center enhance lives
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Capital Region Gives: Green facility helps Damien Center enhance lives

The Albany Damien Center is a champion for the less fortunate.

That title became official when the nonprofit received the 2018 Community Champion Award from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) New York Upstate, which recognized a construction project that "addressed the needs of an underserved community while meeting USGBC's vision of healthy and sustainable building."

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SCI Expands to Vinson Street
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SCI Expands to Vinson Street

Worcester, MA – Sustainable Comfort, Inc. (SCI) announced that its Stanton Loop Neighborhood Revitalization Project in the Bell Hill area of Worcester will expand onto Vinson Street, that runs perpendicular to Stanton Street and is part of the community “loop” that SCI is working to achieve.

The Stanton Loop Revitalization Project started in 2016 as a collaboration between SCI, Civico Development, and WalkerThomas, with SCI acting as the general contractor.

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Sustainable Comfort Promotes French
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Sustainable Comfort Promotes French

Worcester, MA – Sustainable Comfort, Inc. (SCI) announced the promotion of Andrea French, VP of administration, to the ownership team.

She has been with the company since August 2015, managing the company’s strategic human resources, marketing, branding, administration, and insurance efforts.

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Feature: Worcester’s triple-deckers the ‘backbone’ of city’s housing
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Feature: Worcester’s triple-deckers the ‘backbone’ of city’s housing

From the views of the highways and all along the side streets, the distinct clapboard and shingled triple-deckers of Worcester are prominent in the city’s landscape. Rich in stories of family ties, neighborly connections and friendship, the buildings have weathered changes in the city’s economics, demographics and more. And although not all are historical by designation, these three-story houses are, indeed, important to Worcester’s history and serve as a bridge from the past to the present and future.

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Next Phase of Stanton Loop Complete
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Next Phase of Stanton Loop Complete

Worcester, MA – The recent completion of 24 and 30 Stanton Street in Worcester has created shared housing; restored and upgraded dilapidated buildings for health, sustainability, and function; and preserved rich neighborhood history for the next century.

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40 Under Forty: Bert LaValley, 33
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40 Under Forty: Bert LaValley, 33

When he was a toddler, LaValley built an elaborate system of levees, dams and canals in his family's driveway to manage stormwater runoff properly. By the time he co-founded Sustainable Comfort in 2014, energy efficiency had long been in his blood. At Sustainable Comfort, he and his team rehab 100-year-old triple-deckers around Worcester to make them viable for working-class people. Since its founding, the company has grown an average of 65 percent annually and now employs more than 30. Firmly bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, LaValley partnered with chef Jared Forman and drinks connoisseur Sean Woods to launch the downtown Worcester restaurant deadhorse hill in 2016, followed by simjang in 2018. Because of his experience founding a business and dealing with administrative and regulatory issues, LaValley's title – paperwork – at the restaurant reflects his behind-the-scenes role. Through simjang and deadhorse hill, LaValley is involved in the public mural program POW! WOW! Worcester, feeding the artists who graffiti the city's outdoor walls. LaValley volunteers with the Seven Hills Foundation in Worcester and the children's museum EcoTarium.

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Construction starts on mixed-income residential community
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Construction starts on mixed-income residential community

New York State Homes and Community Renewal recently broke ground on The Eastman Reserve in Rochester, the first large-scale new construction development to occur in Eastman Business Park in decades. The development will be located on a previous Kodak parking lot along the western portion of Eastman Avenue. The $52.9 million mixed-income development will feature 187 rental units and commercial space within 17 buildings; 27 units will be targeted to homeless young adults who will have access to on-site support services.

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  These Massachusetts three-deckers were built to house working-class families; Can they still?
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These Massachusetts three-deckers were built to house working-class families; Can they still?

When Worcester was a booming industrial city at the turn of the 20th century, three-decker homes were built to house working-class families near the factories.

The dwellings provided an affordable place for workers -- many of them immigrants -- to live, while staying away from "tenement" style apartments. With their ability to house multiple families, three-deckers made economic and social sense.

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Multifamily Developers Embrace Green Building
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Multifamily Developers Embrace Green Building

Benefits like increased energy efficiency and cost savings, combined with heightened resident demand for sustainable features, are driving builders to think about sustainability.

Alongside the development boom that Marcus & Millichap estimates will add 335,000 new multifamily units to the nation’s inventory this year, another phenomenon is emerging. As developers recognize the benefits of sustainability for both their bottom line and their residents’ quality of life, they are increasingly incorporating sustainable building materials and methods into their projects. More than 1.5 million multifamily residential units were participating in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program as of March 2018, and the organization expects that number to keep rising as new projects come online.

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SCI Named as Energy Star Partner of the Year – Home Energy Rater
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SCI Named as Energy Star Partner of the Year – Home Energy Rater

Sustainable Comfort, Inc. is an energy efficiency and green building consulting firm specializing in third party verification programs in the multifamily residential market. The company provides assistance to developers, architects, and builders during all phases of financing, design, and construction. Sustainable Comfort is receiving ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year recognition for its support of the ENERGY STAR Certified Homes program and its efforts to advance energy efficiency in the affordable housing market.

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Frances Apartments achieve LEED Designation for homes
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Frances Apartments achieve LEED Designation for homes

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a rating system developed by the United States Green Building Council. It is the world’s most commonly used and recognized green building system. LEED provides developers, builders, architects, and communities with methods and practices to create healthy, highly efficient and cost-saving buildings. Construction projects which are able to achieve LEED certification are universally acknowledged to have attained a high level sustainability.

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Frances Apartments receives Silver LEED designation
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Frances Apartments receives Silver LEED designation

Frances Apartments, a 56-unit housing community in the town of Sweden, recently achieved the designation of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Homes — Silver.

The complex, developed by Cornerstone Group and Lifetime Assistance, completed construction in September 2017. It is consistent with New York State Office for Persons with Developmental Disabilities’ Transformation Plan to provide housing options for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live in the most integrated, least restricted settings possible.

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